2. Devlog: Week 9: First Levels & Improvements

Hello, new week new game, I would say!

Another week has passed quickly and I worked hard on improving the Player Model and adding animations. Additionally, I focused on putting all key stones I build so far together into Levels. 

Player Model: 

When I implemented the drawing last week, I worked with outlines and white outlines. Scaled down, it looked really weird and jittery. Luna was also too slim. She did not look the way I imagined her. That is why, I started a different approach. I scratched the outlines and played with simple shapes and colors. Luna's hair is white now and her jumper has a new color. For every frame, I used two different pictures which created basic animations. I did this for her front view when she stands when she is in the air, and when she gets electrified. Plus I added a sequence of her walking sideways and mirrored it in the other direction. To make it look more realistic I slightly varied the height of the two frames. If I have enough time, I might add more keyframes and emotions. On top of that, I adjusted the hair. It flows more naturally now because I made the trail move on the y-axis slightly when she walks.

Improvements:

The biggest improvement was adding the Player's Health. At the moment Luna dies after getting hit three times by a spike. I did a lot of visual updates.  Like drawing the stardust differently, drawing hearts for the health bar, animated arrows, particles... the list goes on and on and ooooon.  and doing some more concept art of Luna.

Level building:

While putting together the first two levels, I experimented with different effects that certain cloud combinations can have. For example, I discovered that a bouncy cloud and a blowing cloud create a super boost together. When we got the feedback this week, there were only small bugs mentioned by my peers that did not feel smooth to them, like knocking into a cloud, or getting stuck at a point. Some of it was intentional, the stuck-in-the-cloud thing needs to be fixed and I am unsure if the game flow really gets interrupted by knocking into other clouds or if it is just the spacing, that I need to work on. I am not sure if I am satisfied with the levels yet, because I think they could have more potential if I use different, more creative approaches. I do not want the levels to solemnly get harder, the further you come but also complex and different. I don’t want one level to be like another one and give it a unique feeling. Because I feel like it would be a missed opportunity not to do so.

To make building levels a little bit easier, I created a tile map to draw the borders and spikes easily. This will help me a lot in the future.

To Do for Next Week / Further on I want to:

• improve the levels that I made so far
• add new levels and experiment with different approaches
• draw the satellite
• To Do after next week:
• create a puzzle to free the stars
• create an intro
• create a title screen

Thank you for reading and see you next week!